Pipeline—An Imagining
For Dana and Ruth, After 5 Elements, KX2art
In school they assigned shop class
to the boys. We girls would watch
them build what we weren’t encouraged
to touch, their barely stubbled faces
obscured by safety goggles, a welder’s mask
for the ones with a knack for the torch.
We held their hands, dusty with wood
shavings, fingers solder-singed after building
a jewelry box or a wire bird cage.
They walked us to Home Ec. and we smiled
when they dropped us at the only class on campus
filled with aprons and dishes and stainless steel cloches.
We learned to knead a textbook apple pie,
punched pre-approved patterns into our crusts
and sucked the burn off our fingers
as we waited for our desserts to rise.
I never perfected a whisk-stiff meringue,
a recipe I could never remember,
unlike the sisters I still recall sitting alone,
together at the back of the room,
the ones who refused to poach an egg
or cross-stich a rose onto a pillow,
who chose instead to build an installment
of cylinders cast out of manicotti shells and foil
stuffed with a glistening custard
of acrylic paints they bought
with the whole of their allowance—
black yellow red blue.
In school they assigned shop class
to the boys. We girls would watch
them build what we weren’t encouraged
to touch, their barely stubbled faces
obscured by safety goggles, a welder’s mask
for the ones with a knack for the torch.
We held their hands, dusty with wood
shavings, fingers solder-singed after building
a jewelry box or a wire bird cage.
They walked us to Home Ec. and we smiled
when they dropped us at the only class on campus
filled with aprons and dishes and stainless steel cloches.
We learned to knead a textbook apple pie,
punched pre-approved patterns into our crusts
and sucked the burn off our fingers
as we waited for our desserts to rise.
I never perfected a whisk-stiff meringue,
a recipe I could never remember,
unlike the sisters I still recall sitting alone,
together at the back of the room,
the ones who refused to poach an egg
or cross-stich a rose onto a pillow,
who chose instead to build an installment
of cylinders cast out of manicotti shells and foil
stuffed with a glistening custard
of acrylic paints they bought
with the whole of their allowance—
black yellow red blue.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the Contributing Editor of Grabbed: Writers Respond to Sexual Assault forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2020 and an Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day. She is the award-winning author of Visionware published by Finishing Line Press as part of its New Women's Voices Series. Moro-Gronlier is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry. Her work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, The Best of the Net and a Lambda Literary Award. Recent work can be found at The Best American Poetry Blog, Rhino, Go Magazine, Fantastical Florida, Notre Dame Review and others. She is a Dual Enrollment Professor of English for Florida International University in conjunction with MDCPS, as well as an English Professor for Miami Dade College. She resides in Miami, Florida, with her wife and son.
Art: Molly Dunham